


but i wrote the words to the swan song

by theviolonist



Category: Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bisexual Character, Crossover, Gen, Immortality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-28
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-06 12:18:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1106721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviolonist/pseuds/theviolonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not only does Juliet live; she lives forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	but i wrote the words to the swan song

**Author's Note:**

  * For [portions_forfox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/portions_forfox/gifts).



> For the [comment ficathon for dead women in fiction](http://girljustdied.livejournal.com/93525.html), for the prompt: _modern au; Juliet lives on._

**one.**

At first they call her, _the girl with the dead boyfriend_. 

That's all they see in her: the wild Capulet runaway with her lungful of bad luck, her dead boyfriend and her vial of poison. _The girl with the dead boyfriend_. That's all she sees in herself too. 

In the street people don't come near her - she drags death with her by the sleeve, always present, always near, and she wears sorrow like a sunday hat, the brim so used it's almost see-through. 

And she doesn't cry. People say she's afraid there won't be anything left when she's cried all her tears, and they're not entirely wrong.

 

Benvolio finds her on the pier, looking down at the roaring sea. 

"You're not wearing a ring," he says, his voice floating on the wind. 

"Romeo didn't have time to get any. He made me one in rattan, but I lost it."

He sits next to her, their shoulders knocking. Juliet doesn't mind as much as she thought she would. "Fair Juliet," he sighs. "What happened?"

"Tragedy. Isn't that what you heard?"

He takes her hand in his, tracing gentle circles on her palm with his thumb. "I heard many things. I heard you saved the city."

"Maybe. I just wanted to be with the man I love, though." The words she doesn't say: _peace is just collateral damage._ Or maybe she saw it all wrong: maybe Romeo was the collateral damage.

"And what happens now?"

"What always happens when someone dies," Juliet says. "Life goes on."

"How cruel," Benvolio says. For a second Juliet wishes she could turn to sand in his embrace, slip out of his arms and disappear; then it passes.

 

Sleeping in her bed alone feels like a betrayal. When Nurse finds her lying on the carpet she lets out a cry and asks her what she's doing. 

"I couldn't sleep," says Juliet, which is only half a lie.

Nurse's eyes fill with pity. "Poor, sweet thing," she says. 

She does everything she can that night. She makes Juliet a pot of warm milk, she tucks her in, she kisses her hair. But the sorrow is deep-set, beats in Juliet's ribcage like a second heart.

"Have you ever seen a man die, Nurse?"

Nurse shakes her head. "Yes. But what you're asking me is if I ever forgot."

Juliet bites her lip so hard she tastes blood. "Well," she asks, "did you?"

The sadness in Nurse's eyes tells her all she needs to know.

"I'm sorry," Nurse says. She blows on the candle, and there comes the darkness, bereft of boyish voices streaming in from the open window. 

"You know," Nurse says from the enclosure of the door, haloed by the slit of light, "you can cry if you like."

Juliet hadn't known this was the injunction she was waiting for. She buries her head in the pillow and she cries, for Romeo Montague, for her husband, for her friends, for her family and for the peace she payed with her own dime, even though the war wasn't her doing. She cries; when she starts she cries for three days straight, until there are no tears left. Afterwards, she's surprised to find that she's still standing. 

 

They're all so happy she's alive: her parents, Nurse, Paris. Like compulsion, her father touches her every time he sees her, as though to make sure she's really flesh and blood. They give her beautiful silks, perfumes, gems, flowers, masks to wear to new masquerades.

"I can't marry you," she says when Paris asks her again, kneeling at her feet, his eyes terribly blue and earnest. 

"Why? Is it because you're a widow? Or do you think you bear a curse?"

"None of those," she says as gently as she can manage. "I just want to live."

 

She's never been here before, but she feels like she knows the place by heart. Leaves, everywhere, the nerved green hands of plants and flowers and strong stems. But she knows better: poison, too, and snakes. 

Friar Lawrence spots her and shakes his head. "Death only comes around once, you know," he says. "I expect there's an empty seat for you in heaven."

She raises her chin to mask the doubt. "How do you know I would've gone to heaven?"

He doesn't answer. He doesn't know. 

And then - "I didn't want to die," she says, her voice small. His eyes grow tender; that he can understand. 

 

(The fact being: she clung to life like ivy, like a wildflower, like Romeo hanging onto her balcony, like the burning crazy love between them. It was like him to die and it's like her to live, and the truth is that there are too many things she wanted to do, and dying wasn't one of them. Of course she's scared - she's human. But she's alive, too.)

 

They won't keep her from leaving this time. Though they don't know who she is, they know she has a hurricane curled in her stomach, they know she's _more_ than the rest of them, humanity cranked up to eleven. The man who opens the gates calls her 'twice-born' under his breath, and Juliet, pleased with the name, decides to take it with her into the unknown. 

 

**two.**

There are hard times. Juliet was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, and though no one is ever prepared for the outside world, perhaps she was even less prepared than most. But she has the will of those swimmers who drown and come out of it alive - nothing defeats her. 

For the first few decades she lives out on the open. She eats weeds, sleeps in natural caves, crouches over icy streams to drink and bathe. At night she looks up at the sky and learns the stars, gives them names of her own invention, and though she must walk in circles for a good while she tries to head west, for a new country.

The animals get used to her. There are bears and wild horses but it's the wolves she loves best, with their untrusting eyes and soft, spiky fur. One of them lets Juliet follow her for an entire day until she loses her in the ink-black night, and even turns back in her flight, her orange eyes glowing like a good-bye.

She almost starves. Her body gets leaner, tanner, stronger, her soul weathered by the wind and the rain. She learns lessons that no words can describe, and she learns the color of her blood, and she learns pain and hunger and hatred. It's all worth-it, though, for the rare moments of bliss, standing in a deserted clearing with the sun raining down on her, the air clear and cold and bright between her open arms. 

Her message to heaven is written in this blessed silence: _I'm living this life for you, too._

 

Living so close to nature teaches her one rule her body avoids: that there is a time for everything, a beginning and an end. The forest shelters her until it can't anymore, and then it shows her a way out, a path lined up with brambles, with an old oak like a pillar standing at its end. 

She doesn't turn back. she walks and walks through the moors until she finds light, a collection of windows like she'd forgotten existed, tucked into a big manor. Shivering, she bangs the knocker. 

 

She stays with Roberto and Carlotta for almost ten years. He, a widower, is a count and studies maps in his free time; she, the daughter, is a wildfire and more than he can handle. They need a tutor - at first roberto is wary of the wildling he took in out of charity, but she shows him she's well-read and attuned to the finer mysteries of literature, and she's willing to work for almost nothing if they give her room and board. The only thing she asks is to know what year it is, and when she has her answer she's satisfied, doesn't ask anything else again. 

Carlotta is young and beautiful and, after Juliet cleans up, more interested in getting her into bed than she is to learn arithmetics. Despite all her time in the woods, Juliet isn't a wolf; she accepts the offer. The warmth of Carlotta's skin against hers is like a healing balm. 

Afterwards, she asks, "Did you ever get your heart broken?"

"No," Juliet lies. 

Carlotta looks a little disappointed. Juliet doesn't tell her that some things, like hearts, never have clean edges when they break; there are truths you have to learn by yourself. 

 

("You never did tell me your last name," Roberto asks her over a game of chess.

"It's Capulet," Juliet says. "Juliet Capulet."

Roberto has a movement of surprise. "Capulet? I thought they were all dead."

That, by the way, is how Juliet learns about the death of her family. 

"I'm an illegitimate child. They never bother giving fake names to bastard daughters."

She loses the game. Maybe it's because her hands are trembling so bad she has to squeeze them between her thighs; or maybe because she always refuses to sacrifice her queen.)

 

Juliet leaves Roberto and Carlotta when they start to wonder why she doesn't age. She hitches a ride with a traveling merchant and makes her way through France, into Germany. There she's no more Juliet Capulet: Juliet Schnitzer is born. For a century she lies low: whole cities are decimated by the sweat, but she escapes; in England queens are killed by the dozen; wars are fought and gold changes hands. Juliet learns to work silk, cotton, linen, to cook and to fuck and to pray. For a short time she works as a serving-maid for Mary Stuart, and cries for her untimely death.

 

Sometimes she misses wealth: her beautiful dresses and the way people would look down when she rested her eyes on them. In 1575 an Ottoman dignitary falls in love with her and offers to have his wife killed so he can marry her. Juliet says she'll settle for being his mistress, and for twenty years she bathes in scented water and has servants wait on her every move. Then one day she wakes up and she realizes how heavy the stones on her neck are, so heavy it feels like the bones of her ribcage are curving inwards. 

When she slips out the window, she feels almost sorry. 

 

1690 is a good year for Juliette Beauxchamp: she learns to play the piano.

 

As a nurse in a Spanish hospital, Julieta Carvalho learns to sew up torn skin and make sense of the deranged mumblings of soldiers. With her agile hands, she's soon promoted, and after the war is over she starts learning about poisons. When she finds the antidote that could've revived Romeo, she squeezes her hand around it so tight that the vial comes apart in her grip.

"How did it happen?" grouses the young surgeon who stitches up her hand. 

"I don't know," Juliet shrugs. "You know how it is. They're so delicate."

 

Other times - not often - she lets herself think about what she is. Immortal, that seems clear, with a life that unfolds, new gifts rolling out of its woolen nooks every time she opens it. Her body is an eternal seventeen, though she can pass for both more and less with little effort. Is it true - what Friar Lawrence said - that God has given up searching for her, that the scythe has swung and for some reason she wasn't under it? Who knows.

(In a way, though, she thinks she deserves it - life. With one hand God giveth, with the other He taketh away; that's what happened with her, only the other way around.)

 

(1803, Norway: the snow is white and Napoleon is roaring outside their doors, mistaking himself for Alexander. Liv hugs her closer in their bed of coarse linen.

"Do you ever think we're lucky?" Liv asks. 

"Why?"

"Because... we're here. Because we're alive. Because we're together. Because there's no war here, and because the sun shines and we have food and a roof over our heads and someone to love who loves us in return."

Juliet shakes her head. "I never thought of it like that. Yes; I suppose we are."

Liv laughs. "Sorry, I'm being silly."

Juliet drags her back into her embrace. "No, you're not. You're right. We're lucky. We're so lucky."

For a second, no sound but that of a kiss: lips meeting, parting, tasting, and outside the silence of winter, and far, far away the rumble of war.

\-- when Juliet finally leaves, she takes the words with her, and from then on, she calls herself lucky.)

 

There are a few near-catastrophies, too: in 1567 she gets caught in her own deception and nearly burns as a witch, has to run barefooted and bleeding from her little Welsh village, sobs racking her frame; in 1622 she gets pregnant and has to get rid of it, cries for days as her unborn child bleeds through her womb; in 1859 a collector at the exhibit she's visiting in Prague recognizes her as the art thief he almost caught five years ago. But she comes out of it every time, stronger and most importantly, alive: she leaves behind a trail of hearts not broken but slightly bruised, like overripe peaches. 

 

**three.**

She could've run. War is never a pleasant business, and this one promises to be particularly devastating; that's when she doesn't know the half of it. The keyword is mud for the soldiers and postcard after postcard goes unanswered. People break down in the streets, run to the bombs for deliverance. Yes, she could've run. Maybe she should've. 

But she doesn't. Juliet Bates would never deem herself brave, and yet there she is, a nurse again, then a factory worker, then a typist for a general. There's a stint as a pilot but that doesn't last long, because the sky is too deep and too wide for a girl like Juliet, whose first instinct is always to run away. 

You could say that the war wrecks her, that it ruins her, that it breaks her. (You could also say that she fills the cracks with gold.)

 

1924: she's the first on the deck at dawn, gaping as Lady Liberty's contours sharpen through the mist. Her breath seizes in her throat: there is something Romeo would've loved to see, a new universe across the ocean heralded by a beautiful woman with a crown and a torch.

She soon gets lost in the hustle-bustle of the port, coal and fish and hard-up people reuniting with ample hugs. She bums a cigarette from a sailor, but he's gone before she can ask for a light.

"Fire?" says a voice behind her a few minutes later.

Juliet smiles even before she turns around; land of new beginnings, here she is.

 

She leaves Peter, or Peter leaves her; another boat, a train, a bus or two, and there she is in San Francisco, a city that looks more like her home country that anything American. She works menial jobs, enjoying the feel of things building themselves right under her nose. She spends a lot of time in bookshops and diners, which is where she meets Dimitri.

He offers her his hand over a plate of hash-browns. "Dimitri," he says theatrically. "Dimitri Ensigrim, _magicien_."

"Enchantée," Juliet says, just to throw him off. 

It works; he sits opposite her and asks her all sorts of questions, and because it's a sunday and Juliet saw a rainbow on her way over she answers most of them. 

As it turns out, Dimitri is the magician of a traveling circus, and he lacks an assistant. Juliet wasn't that fulfilled clerking at the local law firm, and besides, she's always eager for adventure; soon they're on the road, Juliet - rechristened 'Mademoiselle Juliette' for the panache - getting sawed in two every night. She also works as the disincarnated voice of the talking head, and gets to make up all sorts of sibylline riddles, which is comparatively much more fun. 

One of the dwarves, a nice woman called Sophie, teaches her how to cheat at cards; she also picks up the accordion and a useful knowledge of knives from the resident Guillaume Tell. 

On a drunken night, Dimitri confesses that he knows some real magic, passed on by his Siberian grandmother. "It has to do with death," he slurs, "I think they call it blood magic or some bollocks like that. You know -- raise the dead, put them back to bed, that sort of thing. Immortality."

Marty, the horse trainer, swats him on the back of the head. "Moron," he laughs, "you're the one that should go back to bed." Juliet laughs in chorus. 

The next night, she slips out of the circus tent halfway through the performance and vanishes through the wide Atlantic City streets, her mind full of card tricks. The voice that tells her that too much magic in one place isn't a good thing might be her fear, or it might be something else; either way, it's never been wrong before, and that's all Juliet needs to trust. 

 

In the end she doesn't stay long in America: as much as she loves its gaudy brightness and shark-toothed individuality, the metal ledges and theatre stars, there is something of her back in Europe, her heart's lung, a part of her she doesn't want to let go of; not to mention Prohibition, which is possibly the dullest law to ever have been passed. 

The thirties are marked with abundance: abundance of sound, of color, of touch; dances so fast you can't see your partner's face before he passes you over to someone else; jazz and the tapping of feet until shoes are worn through, sleeves hang by a thread. Smiles so brilliant the stars are deemed child's play.

Like everyone else, Juliet lets herself lose her head; unlike them, she has an inkling of what's to come. 

 

Juliet is in Germany again when 1939 comes around. Throughout the entire thing, she never leaves, and though her rebellion is of the slow and insidious kind, the kind that keeps books from being burned and children from being taken, she believes she's doing a good thing. For a long time, because she was immortal, she thought she could keep out of the history books; but life's taught her. You cannot live in the periphery. Only gods are allowed there, and gods are selfish, indifferent beings. 

 

In 1946, Juliet leaves Batterstdät and travels to Cologne. There, she offers herself a sweetness, a late viewing of _Gone With the Wind_. When she tells the cashier her name, he frowns. 

"You mean, like the book?" he asks, like he suspects the name might be fake. 

Despite her surprise, Juliet gives him her best confident smile. "Yes. Like the book."

(In the end, it's not that surprising that Benvolio wrote about them; what is is that she never heard of it before now.)

She thinks about it, unsure if she likes the idea: her name trapped between two pages, ink and fake truths about her love for Romeo. She vows never to read it, as long as she lives - she knows better than anyone the trappings of memory -; in the darkened projection room, her tongue fizzling with acidic sweets, she rechristens herself Juliet O'Hara.

 

On july 21st, 1969, Neil Armstrong takes a step forward and touches the surface of the moon. Huddled in blankets, her eyes riveted on her TV, Juliet remembers the days of witches and the old fear that anger could sour your insides.

 

The best thing about the 70s is probably the music. At Woodstock, Juliet gets lost in the crowd and walks for miles on end with nothing but music in her ears and friendly faces smiling up at her. Two decades later, she dances under a disco ball, beautiful, her gaudy clothes fragmented by the light. For a second she feels like Midas's daughter, like her touch could turn anyone immortal. 

 

In New York, the Avengers Initiative sends Natasha Romanov to recruit her in a coffe-shop in Soho. She slides into the chair opposite Juliet, her eyes obscured by sunglasses. 

"My name is Natasha Romanov," she says. 

Juliet takes a sip of her hot chocolate. "Is that your real name? I used to know one of the Romanovs. No, not anastasia. Maria. She was very sweet."

Natasha bristles. "No. It's not my real name." She quirks an eyebrow. "Is Juliet Brontë?"

"That obvious, huh?" she laughs. "Well, half of it is."

Natasha says nothing while she eats her pancakes, and then: "So you're immortal."

"Hmm," Juliet says. Her mother taught her never to speak while her mouth is full. 

"If you join us," Natasha's saying when Juliet tunes back in, half like she doesn't believe the words herself, her voice a monotone, "you can help save people."

"You seem like you're doing a good enough job without me."

"There are always more people to be saved."

It's the exhaustion in her voice that makes Juliet look up; from what she's read - what she's seen - of Natasha Romanov, she's not one to show weakness. Juliet nods noncommittally.

"We can protect you."

"I've been protecting myself for a while now. I manage."

Natasha knows a lost cause when she sees one, but she takes a last stab at it. "You know, if you want to die, we can arrange that too."

"Why would I want that?" No, that's a lie, she knows. she's had centuries to think about it, after all. She gives Natasha a smile and a shake of the head. "No, thank you."

After a minute of silence, Juliet sneaks Natasha a glance; she doesn't often fail a mission. "But we could be friends, if you wanted," she says. 

"I've got enough friends," Natasha says. 

Still -- she stays for the second helping of pancakes, and when she leaves Juliet in front of her door she says they'll be in touch. Juliet doubts they will, but she watches her go like she's seen so many people go before, her red hair swaying in the wind, and she murmurs an old prayer to keep her safe. 

(Later, she'll regret not taking the offer, but never enough to ask for it back.)

 

The year is 2013, the name on the Starbucks cup is Juliet Jones and it's a bright pastel morning in Paris, city of lights. The Sorbonne building gleams a soft white when Juliet goes to register, her skirt fluttering around her thighs. Everything tastes like cinnamon and happiness.

At the bus stop a red-headed man with a beard asks her for the time. Juliet tells him; when he spots the newspaper in her hand, he comments, "Guess the crisis is finally over, isn't it?"

Juliet could tell him about all the times people thought wars were over and ended up being wrong; she could tell him about Troy, and about 1929, about the Russian winter, even about his own country's _Der des Ders_ which ended up being the first of a long line of violent and inhumane wars. 

But she doesn't. Instead she just smiles and says, "Yes. Yes, I guess it is."

 

"We learn that in _Hamlet_ there is a fear of --"

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," Juliet says, her cheeks red from having run.

The teacher makes a sour face. "I'll not tolerate lateness in my class," he says in French, "miss --"

"Jones."

"Miss Jones. But please have a seat, as it's your first day. Now let's continue, shall we?"

Juliet cases the room for an empty seat and finally finds one next to a thin-shouldered boy of whom the only thing she can see is the wispy blond hair at the nape of his neck. She slips silently into the seat, her eyes fixed on the board. 

"Romeo," a voice whispers. 

A shiver zings through her. "I'm sorry?"

"Romeo," the voice repeats, soft like honey, and when she turns around the boy is looking at her, his smile wide open. "It's my name."

"Oh," says Juliet, disbelieving.

He quirks an eyebrow. "What about you? Your name?"

Juliet lets out a laugh. She remembers Dimitri's words, explaining one of his illusions: _some people take time, and some of them never come back._ She'd just thought - but it doesn't matter now, because it's him, Juliet is as sure of it as she is of her immortality.

"Juliet."

He grins. "Nice to meet you, Juliet."

She nods and turns back to the board. His presence besides her, warm and reassuring, is like yet another promise of eternity.


End file.
